The Green Berets: The Amazing Story of the U. S. Army's Elite Special Forces Unit

by Robin Moore

  “Get inside,” Kornie commanded. “If I call down, head for the southeast gate. Borst will radio flare ships to illuminate only west of the camp. When we get out we head due east into the hills. And let us pray we do not run into our old friends, the KKK!”

  The telltale whirring of incoming 60-mm. mortar rounds cut off further talk. The men scrambled into the security of the deep main bunker, Kornie and I remaining on top.

  “Oh my God,” Kornie groaned. “Look.”

  The whole western approach to the camp, illuminated up to the hills, suddenly filled with black-uniformed enemy. Once again mortars smashed into camp. The shrill sounds of their bugles carried clearly to us. Lieutenant Cau, wounded in the face, arm, and leg in the slashing counterattack, came up to Kornie’s post.

  “Sir,” the Vietnamese lieutenant reported, “I put almost every good man left in camp on west wall but a few men on other walls. What more advice you give me?”

  “You and your men have fought well and bravely, Lieutenant. Where is Captain Lan?”

  “Still in bunker.” Cau indicated below where we were standing.

  “My advice is give the VC bloody hell to the end, and you might say a few words to Buddha while you’re at it.”

  “‘I am a Catholic, sir.”

  “Well try Jesus,” Kornie said, meaning no irreverence. “You know, Lieutenant, the Americans have orders to evacuate—get out if they’re getting overrun.”

  “Yes, sir. We’ll cover you. I leave southeast bunker full staff to cover you.”

  “Thanks, Cau. If we get out of this, Lieutenant Colonel Train and I are going to see you make captain.”

  “Thank you, sir. Do not let them put me at desk in Saigon.” Cau saluted and in spite of his wounds limped to the west wall to command the final defense of Phan Chau.

  Kornie’s eyes were moist. “My God. When you meet one like Cau, you hate your guts for all the bad things you say about the Vietnamese.”

  Our mortars, still directed by the Vietnamese sergeant in the tower, which so far had proved impossible for the Communists to destroy, poured accurate destruction into the advancing ranks of the fresh VC battalion.

  “They want this place God damn bad,” Kornie muttered. “They had two battalions broken and now they’ll lose most of a third to get us.” The strike force opened up with their 57-mm. recoilless rifles and rocket launchers, but the black horde kept coming, fanning out as though they would hit the north and south walls as well as the west. The machine-gun tracers stabbed out at them, but they moved inexorably toward us.

  “This has to be it,” Kornie said.

  The remaining machine guns stuttered defiance as VC mortars continued to plow up the western section of the camp.

  Suddenly, the loud snarls from the sky we had all been desperately hoping to hear split the air. A flight of six T-28 fighter planes came out of nowhere, whipped low over our beleaguered camp and opened up with their .50-caliber machine guns. Instantly, channels of broken, disintegrating bodies appeared in the ranks of the enemy battalion. At the same moment, brilliant white-hot pools of fire spread among the Communists as napalm bombs tumbled from the planes.

  Black-uniformed bodies burst into flame, moved a step or two and were incinerated. Human torches screamed out their last. The napalm bombs had crippled the attack. The T-28’s banked sharply, circled and came in for another murderous run.

  Still the Viet Cong wouldn’t accept defeat. Every black-clad Communist still alive in front of us changed his direction of fire, and the sky became a pattern of crossing lines of tracer fire and bullets from automatic weapons. Into this near solid wall of crossfire the pilots dove their planes.

  And then one of the low-flying T-28’s burst into flames. It streaked for the low hills, crashed, and the hills burst into an inferno of red flames. The other planes, as though in retaliation, came back for yet another run, shattering the fleeing remnants of the third Communist battalion with .50-caliber machine-gun bullets.

  The men on the walls screamed joyous cheers, jumping up and down, pounding each other. Kornie shouted his exhilaration at the sky. We watched the ragged Communist lines break and the skyward fire cease as the planes strafed and bombed the battalion to annihilation.

  Phan Chau was saved. But the T-28’s didn’t let up, strafing the Viet Cong in pass after pass until there could not be a live Communist on the Vietnam side of the border. Finally the T-28 pilots made a last pass over the fiercely burning pyre of their comrade, pulled up into a barrel roll over Phan Chau and flew away.

  Train, in high spirits, appeared from the bunker where he had been talking on the radio to the pilots. “I asked them why they took so long,” he cried. “You know what those hot shots said? They radioed back that Special Forces usually didn’t require fighter assistance. They complained we usually beat off the VC before the planes could reach their objective and join the fight.”

  Soberly, Kornie gazed across at the fiery beacon on the hillside that had been a T-28. Train followed his stare. “Yes,” the lieutenant colonel said, “I feel very badly about that. They saved us.”

  “If we’d had those 250 Hoa Haos that the politicians with stars on their collars took away from us,” Kornie couldn’t help saying, “we could have destroyed that third battalion ourselves.”

  “In any case, Captain, I’ve never seen such heroic resistance.”

  “One thing, Colonel. You saw, I hope, that we would have been wiped out long before the air cover came if the VC had attacked one day sooner. Only in the last twenty-four hours we put in those little tricks that saved us.”

  “Yes, Captain,” Train answered sternly. “I meant to ask you, isn’t it a little unorthodox to mine your allies’ bunkers? I don’t suppose you told your counterpart? What do I tell Major Tri? What do I tell Saigon? That we place charges under our allies and don’t tell them?”

  “My God!” Kornie blurted out. “Tell the Vietnamese? Every striker would know in a day’s time. Why the hell not send a radio message to Hanoi that at Phan Chau they’d better not jump our bunkers because—”

  Train burst out laughing—for the first time since I’d known him. He pounded Kornie’s shoulder. “Kornie, relax. I agree. I am grateful to you for helping me understand this special unit of ours.”

  Then, looking around the carnage inside and outside the walls of the camp he said quietly, “Let’s see what we can do to help. Are all the Americans accounted for?”

  Kornie shook his head sadly. “Schmelzer is missing.” He pointed toward the demolished northwest bunker. “That’s where he was last time I saw him, just before the VC 57 made a direct hit.”

  “Right,” Train said. “Let’s go see what we can do. And Kornie, next time you plan an operation like the one in Cambodia, will you invite me along? It will make it easier for me to invent”—Train smiled—“plausible deviations from the truth when necessary.”

  2

  The Immortal Sergeant Hanks

  One hundred and forty miles north of Saigon, on one of Vietnam’s most beautiful stretches of seacoast, is the resort city of Nha Trang. Presently it is home to the Vietnam Air Force academy, the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) NCO school, and the largest U.S. Army field hospital north of Saigon.

  For a year Nha Trang served as headquarters of U.S. Army Special Forces; its central location made its large airfield an ideal logistical base for supplying the Special Forces A teams all over the country. By mid-1964 the Special Forces headquarters (known as the SFOB) was split, logistical control remaining in Nha Trang while the commanding officer of Special Forces and his intelligence and operations sections were moved to Saigon—where MAC-V and MAAG could keep closer reins on their unconventional activities.

  This story begins before the SFOB was split, during the time Special Forces enjoyed the autonomy which made many of its successful if occasionally unorthodox forays against the Communist Viet Cong possible. The SFOB was dominated by five huge white warehouses that dwarfed the complex of one-
story barracks and offices; in them were stored the supplies for the 40 A detachments.

  At one end of the rows of barracks was the PCOD (Personnel Coming Off Duty) lounge known as the Playboy Club. Special Forces officers and enlisted men gathered and drank there together.

  At 5:00 one Saturday afternoon Captain Tim Pickins, one of the ASO’s.(Area Specialist Officers) at the SFOB, and I were having a few drinks. The area specialists were my closest link to activities around the country, and Pickins and I had particularly good rapport. We were talking about where I should go to get the best crack at a really good operation.

  “You gonna run out of luck you keep hanging around with A teams,” Pickins predicted solemnly.

  “What about you?”

  “You think I’m gonna cash in now? When I had an A team last year, maybe I could have got it. But now I only go out just enough to draw combat pay.”

  “Which is just enough to buy the six-by-two farm,” I commented.

  “I ought to send you to Muc Tan. They’re pretty secure there. Least I wouldn’t be worried about you getting greased.”

  I was protesting I didn’t want to go where they’re secure, when the door to the club burst open and in walked a tall whip of a captain and a lean, grim-faced master sergeant.

  The men removed their green berets and came over to the bar. Pickins swiveled on his seat.

  “Hey, Hillman, I never figured on seeing you in tonight. Now that your replacements are here, and with things so nice down in Saigon—all those girls and bars. . . .”

  “It’s our PCOD,” said the captain. “We all got our blood tests and those as needed shots got them. Everyone’s ready to go home to his wife or girl nice and clean.”

  The master sergeant grinned. “Of course, some of the team stayed in Saigon. They fixed themselves up with an APCOD.” At Pickins’ questioning look the sergeant explained, “That’s ‘adjusted pussy cut-off date.’”

  “Yeah,” Hillman added, “and that young stud of an XO of mine, he’s staying down to Tuesday, worked himself out an AAPCOD with the doc. ‘Absolute adjusted pussy cut-off date!’ ”

  We all laughed, and Pickins introduced me to Sergeant Rucker and Captain Hillman. “Where’s that poor sonofabitch who’s going to replace me?” Hillman asked.

  “Captain Farley’s still over at the three shop getting briefed,” Pickins replied. “He and his team will probably be in here pretty soon.”

  “Good. I want plenty of time to tell him personally what a mess he’s getting into at Muc Tan.”

  “I heard things were reasonably pacified there,” I said.

  “With the VC, maybe. Christ, if all we had to do was fight the VC this war would be won damned soon. Our problem is the Viets right in our own camp. You’ve heard of LLDB?”

  “I’ve been here a few months,” I said stiffly.

  Disgustedly, Hillman turned to his sergeant. “Tell the man what LLDB stands for.”

  “‘Lousy little dirty bug-outs,’” Rucker recited.

  “I’ve seen some sorry LLDB types,” I agreed. “But I’ve also seen LLDB officers and men who’d stand up number one in any army in the world.”

  “That may be,” Rucker allowed. “I guess it just happened that in my three tours in Vietnam I never drew a good LLDB team.”

  “Wait’ll you come back,” I said confidently. “The new CO of LLDB is doing his damnedest to straighten his command out.”

  “I’ll believe it when I see it,” Rucker growled.

  “As you may gather, Captain Hillman’s team has been having some problems with their counterparts,” Pickins explained dryly.

  Hillman glared at the area specialist. “If the colonel doesn’t relieve that camp commander, Lieutenant Chi, we might as well close up the goddamn camp. The VC don’t need to bother us with Chi on their side. Yes,” said Hillman, ordering a second can of beer, “my replacement is in for trouble. Who is this Captain Farley? Does he know anything about Vietnam?”

  “He’s from the 5th at Bragg,” Pickins answered. “He’s never been here before. He’s a good man though—spent three years with the 10th. Just graduated from the Special Warfare School.”

  “Zack Farley?” I asked. “He was in my class. I’ll have to go down and see him.”

  “You’ll see a man in trouble,” Hillman promised. “Sonofabitch, just once we got ambushed by the VC, and an LLDB sergeant with a greasegun wouldn’t get up and charge. Know what I did? I kicked his ass so hard he jumped up and his men followed him and we wiped out the ambush. And Lieutenant Chi? He sends my name to Saigon for abusing Vietnamese NCO’s.”

  “Who’s the team sergeant of the new detachment, sir?” Rucker asked Pickins.

  “Sergeant Hanks.”

  “Ed Hanks. Damned good man. We were in Laos working for the Agency together in ’62. He’ll keep the team STRAC.”

  “I hope he’s got some other men with Vietnam experience,” Hillman said. “Those guys who come over from Bragg are usually first-timers here. Now take the 1st at Okie. I don’t think there’s a man who hasn’t got at least two tours in Laos, Vietnam, or—” He gave me a look and cut himself off, ending, “or some of the other places around here.”

  “If this war keeps going the way it is,” Pickins said, “every man in Special Forces will have one hell of a lot of Vietnam experience behind him.”

  The door opened and into the Playboy Club strolled Captain Zack Farley and his entire team. He spotted me and I jumped up and shook my old classmate’s hand. He offered a few good-natured insults about civilians, and Pickins introduced him to the man he was replacing.

  Hanks and Rucker greeted each other happily and beers were ordered all around. “What the hell kind of morgue are they running here?” Hanks asked boisterously after his first drink. “Every lousy barrack has a big sign on front and is named after some guy I know was killed over here. Jesus. Everhardt, Goodman, Cordell—I served under Captain Cordell, one of the finest officers in the United States Army—Brock, all of them. Damned near came loose just walking down here.”

  Rucker nodded. “I felt the same way.”

  Hanks pushed a beer at his captain. “Captain Farley, sir,” he said, “there’s one thing I want. And maybe Captain Pickins can do something about it too. If they grease me on this tour”—he paused, and then went on—“I just want one thing. Name the shit house after me.”

  Someone laughed, but Hanks shook his head. “No shit, sir, I mean it. If my name’s going up on one of these buildings, make it one everybody uses. All those guys coming through here thinking of me for a few minutes each day. It would be like immortal.”

  Farley raised his beer. “If the time ever comes, I promise to do my best.”

  “Thank you, sir,” said Hanks, and ordered more beers all around.

  The rest of the evening, except for a brief chow break, Hillman and Sergeant Rucker gave the new A team a profane, often obscene, and always derogatory toward the LLDB, briefing on what they could expect at Muc Tan. Before we broke up I promised Zack Farley that I would visit him at Muc Tan before the month was out.

  As it happened, two months passed before I had a chance to make it to Muc Tan. Remembering all the warnings of Captain Hillman and Sergeant Rucker, I was curious to see how Zack was doing.

  The dominating feature of Muc Tan is an enormous rubber plantation, along the north edge of which the Special Forces camp is situated. Occasional areas under cultivation are cleared from the surrounding thick scrub brush and there are a few villages around the camp. The province capital is ten miles due east of the camp. The chief job of the Special Forces team at Muc Tan is border surveillance. The Cambodian border is ten miles to the west. The camp itself is only fifty miles from Saigon, to which daily convoys proceed. There is also the daily Air Force milk run between the province capital and Saigon.

  Muc Tan is considered almost a showpiece Special Forces camp by MAC-V, and it is here that visiting dignitaries are taken. There is always new construction work going on,
the latrines are the newest and cleanest, the defenses are set-piece perfection and the Vietnamese strike force is one of the country’s best disciplined. The area around Muc Tan, while not free of Viet Cong guerrillas, is at least so well patrolled that very few Communist raids on villages or ambushes occur. This last was the reason I had delayed so long in turning up. I might have put off the trip even longer had not Captain Pickins mentioned that a certain village near Muc Tan was suspected of being an important way station for Viet Cong infiltrators from Cambodia. Captain Farley wanted to raid the village, but Pickins and Lieutenant Colonel Train thought up a more unconventional plan. They would quietly surround the village, throw up barbed wire during the night, and then march in, hold every man and woman under arrest, and use the polygraph to interrogate them. Train felt that much more information could be derived this way. I decided to visit the camp in time to spend a couple of days with Farley before the operation.

  No one at the A team was expecting me when I arrived at the airstrip via the milk run from Saigon. The radio message that I was on my way got to Farley after I’d been there about a day. However, I spotted a Special Forces sergeant sitting in a three-quarter ton truck. He watched me approach with some curiosity. Although I wore the Special Forces jungle fatigues with a name tape on my right breast and my jump wings sewed on my left, I wore no insignia on my collar, of course, nor any on my green bush hat. On my back was a standard lightweight combat pack. My folding-stock carbine was comfortably slung over my left shoulder.

  Suddenly the medic from Farley’s A team, Sergeant Menzes, recognized me and jumped from the truck, telling me Captain Farley had been looking for me for over a month. Apologetically, he said we’d have to wait a few minutes until he had picked up some supplies and mail. Along with several American advisers from various commands in the province and two American civilians, undoubtedly USOM people, I watched crates, boxes, trunks, and spare machine parts slid and lifted down the Caribou’s tail ramp.